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Best guess given the quality looks like a tick to me, although the long things at the front don't really fit but that could just be the way it's presented (on the old ones the front legs will be wider than the rest).

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Must admit that tick was my first thought, but I'm pretty sure it isn't a tick. We pull those off our cats from time to time. They tend to be lighter in colour and look more like a ball shape with a spike sticking out of them (after they have been yanked out with the tick tool) and have very short legs.

These things seem to live on the ceiling and have only appeared after the recent showers. Periodically they fall off the ceiling, then move around a bit, and then seem to vanish.

They're so small that you can't make out the "antlers" without magnification. Those do suggest beetle to me (that and it must get on the ceiling somehow).

We don't have exposed beams in this room, and the things are only in this room.

However: at some point there has been damp coming through the ceiling just near the ceiling rose which has split the ceiling apart in a line, it seems to be made up of two stuck-on panels which are painted over, and it has "cracked along the line in the middle" e.g. those two panels have pulled apart slightly.

So it is possible that the things are "coming through the ceiling", the loft does have exposed beams, and their appearance could indeed be damp-related.

I shall get a better picture the next time one of them falls on the desk in front of me.

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Entirely possible if it looks right. There are loads of little black beetles so identification can be difficult even for an expert which I am definitely not. I wouldn't worry too much about it. If they eat the house it's your landlords problem.